1 I Believe ***
2 I Won’t Block Out Your Sun **
3 This is Where We Are **
4 Monday Girl ***
5 Where Were You? ***
6 Shadow On The Moon ****
7 Just Another Melody Line ***
8 I Do ****
9 When Dreams Collide **
10 Clockwork Man ****
11 Amber In Your Eyes **
12 She Leaves A Light On ****
13 Whiplash ***
14 Conversation Dries ****

Album score: 53.3

I love Marc voice, I love his melodies, I love his lyrics. What lets this album down is the bland band arrangments. Too many of these songs sound like generic soft rock, or have annoying repetitive beats, or both. Underneath that there are the beautiful melodies, but they just don’t come out often enough to make this album a great one. It’s good, but it should be a lot better.

I can’t find anything from the album on youtube, but here’s Marc live:

Pete Frame, is it? Yep, very cool chart (with a bunch of personal connections, just on that there page!). I’ve heard of Firefall, but not where it came from or went, for example. Richie Furay pastors a church in Broomfield, just down the road. Jim Gordon I knew very well. Worked at the same place as Dallas Taylor for years and met him once. Got the pic and info saved. Thanks!

Found these yesterday (Monday) and there’s more and I’m excited and it’s a huge pleasure to hear Fogerty breaking out of his perfectionistic tendencies, loosen up with the music and do more with his tunes like Dylan did and many did thereafter. John Fogerty from 2012 on is quite different from the play-the-tunes-as-written which was the closest he had to a flaw. That, and not having a saxophone player on The Eye of the Zombie Tour. The constant now seems to be Kenny Aronoff playing the absolute skins off the drums. Since he and Fogerty have been working together they’ve both gotten looser and better.

Here ya go - about four hours of some Miqque Music*.

= Ten points to those who get what I’m riffing on. This is a tough one, so the gloves are off.

A double album, the first disc original material, the second disc all covers. Unlike Marc’s previous album, these songs are all stripped back to just his voice and acoustic guitar, and I think it’s all the better for that. This is where his strength as a performer lies, and you can hear it on his own songs and on the well-chosen set of covers. If you only get one Marc Atkinson CD, it should be this one.

Had my first chance to listen to the new (new as in new official remaster of a 40-year-old bootleg) Deep Purple CD, Long Beach 1971.

Phenomenal. Possibly the best Deep Purple show I’ve ever heard (and I’ve heard quite a lot). This was the band at the peak of their live ability, with a couple of years of constant touring under their belts to hone their individual and group improvisational skills, but not yet sick of it all (and each other) as they became shortly afterwards.

This is going to be the album of the year. Of the decade, probably.

Honestly, it makes Made In Japan look like they weren’t really trying.

The guys I play with (well, it’s been a while) tend to do a lot of Deep Purple. One night when we had a really hot guest drummer we did “Highway Star” and my buddy Rudi just tore it up, not missing a note in the extended solo. As he was playing, my other friend was poking me and saying “Play along!” to which I had to respond “Rudi does not need my ‘help’!”

Despite the different line-ups, Deep Purple left a much deeper mark on the music scene than most people acknowledge!

My own first band - we only played the once (still have the tape, which desperately needs to be digitized) - started off with “Child In Time”, with a segue into Quicksilver’s “Pride of Man”. Fun stuff in the early Eighties!

In less than a year after her first album, Kate Bush managed to write and record her second. The style hasn’t changed from the debut, but overall it’s a more consistent and I actually think better album, despite not having the big hits of the first.